スペクトログラム – ノスタルジア悪夢

Recommendation: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ノスタルジア悪夢1 is one of the few vaporwave releases that can own the descriptor “haunting” without diluting the word. This release comes from Luxury Sky District, a label as pseudonymous as its artists, that claims to be from Bermuda and releases all of its albums with a publication date in the year 1995. The original release came out on translucent green cassette in an edition of twenty with two bonus tracks around Halloween time. The project name スペクトログラム2 is an alias of バーチャルSound Terminal3, who has released on other labels such as Beer Wizard. バーチャルSound Terminal’s works are generally classic-style or sample curation in nature; スペクトログラム combines elements of either within the vaporgoth framework.

ノスタルジア悪夢 starts off with a bit of classic-style vaporwave, but it quickly goes vaporgoth by the time that “スタート Menu” ends.4 The album utilizes the method of samplism pioneered by 骨架的 and popularized by Chinese Hackers in extending and distorting samples to an extreme that is characterized by a sonic equivalent to dark ambient music. However, the samples are very much still samples, and listeners can just barely make out such parts on tracks like “ダークに目覚め Surroundings” and “で知覚 Silence”. This work also features fractured piano melodies on tracks such as “Finding 方向”, which sounds a bit like “プロミセス「▣世界から解放され▣」” from INTERNET CLUB’s (somewhat controversial) vapornoise masterpiece ▣世界から解放され▣.

The last two tracks take up almost one-half of the total run-time. Both of these are highly based in sample curation. The first – “Entities 道を集めています” – predominantly uses the standard vaporgoth trope of heavy extension and degradation, and as such is a bit monotonous. The second – “生存することはできません (insert coin)” – merges breathy synthesizer-like sounds from extreme tempo-shifting. As before, it’s pretty obviously sample curation, except an extremely slowed-down version, and it may be compared to the “Justin Beiber’s ‘Baby” 5000% Slowed Down” mixes on YouTube. It’s a rather transparent editing style, which may be disappointing to some looking for dark ambient/vaporgoth with a bit of a producer’s bite, but its simplicity works for what it is.